


Like Sunshine, but Brighter

by SpaceWaffleHouseTM



Series: One Shots from the Waffle House [21]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), No Pregnancy, Second Kiss, TRoS Spoilers, Tros fix-it, Visions, a lot of kisses, just enough mentions of sex to earn an M rating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21890929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM
Summary: They are both injured and recovering from what’s just happened, but that doesn’t stop Rey from kissing him, nor does it stop him from kissing her back.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: One Shots from the Waffle House [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1298357
Comments: 87
Kudos: 742
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	Like Sunshine, but Brighter

**Author's Note:**

> This goes without saying but TRoS spoilers y’all:
> 
> Wow. TRoS was a movie. Tbh it should’ve ended at the kiss but like what can you do fam? We gonna fix this shit.

He feels like he’s in a daze. The wounds he sustained at the hands of Palpatine ache and make him dizzy in a way he hasn’t felt since she sliced his face open on Starkiller Base, but the reason he’s feeling lost right now is a good one. Right now, he’s lost in her. In spite of all the odds, in spite of everything that’s happened between them, he’s kissing her. His hand is in her hair, her fingers are gingerly caressing his cheek, and he is kissing her. 

He’s only just found peace—just resolved the conflict inside of him after so long fighting it, and this on top of it all makes him feel serene, makes him feel  _ right _ . Her lips feel made to fit with his, and he wonders why he didn’t come to her sooner, why he didn’t find her and hold her close before now. 

Having Rey close is like standing in golden sunlight as the sun rises over the horizon to greet the new day, like having warmth from a fire cast all over his body, and he feels like after years of searching, he’s finally found where he belongs. He never belonged to the dark or the light, not completely, he just belonged here, with her, at her side and as her equal, her other, her  _ partner.  _ He was never meant to belong to any other place or any other person, he was always meant to be with  _ her,  _ he realizes as the gears start turning in his mind, sparked by the kiss she’s giving him. 

How much of a fool he’s been this last year astounds him, and as she pulls away, he can’t wait for all the days ahead where he can do this again and again and watch the smile light up on her face. It makes him giggle, his own lips parting in the widest, most giddy smile he’s given anyone since he was a child. It makes her laugh in turn, and she presses her forehead against his, her breath ghosting over his lips as they hold each other in the cavern where the last of the darkness holding them back has been destroyed. 

It should be kind of gross; they’re both sweaty and covered in blood, but it isn’t. It’s comforting and warm and in spite of everything, in spite of the losses they’ve both just endured, he feels wonderful. 

“Rey…” he breathes, hearing her voice in his head echoing his name in the moments just before she’d taken his face into her hand and kissed him. 

She’s shaking in his arms, and it occurs to him that she’s cold—no, cold and traumatized. He knows what Rey’s just gone through; that she’s just come face to face with a legacy she never wanted to carry, that she’s dealing with something no one should ever deal with. This is something he knows all too well, but he also knows she’s just died and come back. 

Rey has just been somewhere dark and cold that he knows anyone with a degree of sanity longs to avoid seeing, and he holds her a little closer as he remembers how it felt to see those lifeless eyes, how much it had hurt to crawl out of that place he’d been cast into and realize she was gone… He can’t think about it, the whole thing hurts too much, so he just holds her close to him, keeps her in his arms to assure himself she’s alive and they’re going to be okay even as the adrenaline from getting to her and saving her begins to wear off, and the pain from his fall kicks in. 

It starts to hurt a few seconds later, and he groans as Rey tries to shift on his lap, just intending to bring him closer, but there’s something wrong with the bones of his leg, and he cries out in agony as she moves. All that does is cause her to shift herself away from him, concern filling her gaze as she rolls out of his grasp, and looks him up and down, assessing all of his injuries as she goes. 

When her eyes meet his next, there’s a very real, frightened fear in them, like she’s actually afraid of what will happen to them next. It’s a far cry from what had transpired between them in the forest, and he wonders how the hell he’d gotten lucky enough for her to ever consider caring for him, but he can’t worry about that now. All he can focus on is healing these injuries so he can kiss her again properly, so he can hold the woman he loves closely as she gives him every ounce of love she holds in her body. 

“We need to get you out of here,” she says, and she’s right, they need to leave, the cavern is half collapsed, corpses litter the whole damn arena where Palpatine’s spectators had borne witness to an epic destruction, but  _ hell _ if he doesn’t want to stay here with her a little bit longer. 

In spite of everything he’s thinking, he still nods, and allows her to stand up, then offer him her hand. Of all the times they’ve given one another their hands, they’ve only actually held one another once—just a minute ago when his palm had splayed out on her abdomen and she’d laid her hand over his upon waking—and never followed through on it. This time is different. 

This time he can tell that when he takes her hand, something beautiful will come of it. 

What he isn’t prepared for, though, is how badly it hurts to stand. He knows agony, he’d faced it plenty of times under the thumb of the thing he’d called Snoke, but what happens when he stands up—when his bones move and he has to walk again—it makes him want to die. Another sharp cry nearly escapes him before his teeth take his lower lip between them, and he hisses sharply instead. 

Concern is in her eyes immediately, and they sweep over his body, checking him for wounds through both the force and pure, naked vision. Still holding his hand, she takes a step forward, and lets one of her hands come up to his side, pressing gently against where he knows he broke a rib in the fall. A sharp gasp escapes him from the pain even that tiny little touch causes, and she almost retracts her hand before seeming to think better of it, and instead spreading her fingers out over his body. 

It hurts to breathe, to take in the air necessary to speak, but he does it. “What are you doing?”

“I-I need to—“

He stops her mid-sentence, already feeling what she’s trying to do through the force. Placing a hand over hers, his fingers lace theirs together as he stumbles back a step, and shakes his head. “Not yet. You just came back.” The words echo through his mind as he speaks them, the memory of her glazed over eyes haunting him in the worst possible way. “I’ll be fine until we can get help.”

“Ben, I can't just watch you suffer like this,” she protests, one of her hands coming up to caress his cheek, wiping away a drop of blood that’s started drying there in the process. “You saved me.”

Resting a hand over hers, he turns his face into her palm, and presses his lips against it. “You saved me first,” he reminds her, remembering her hand on his chest, how she’d healed him, and how he breathed deeply, easily for the first time in years. “Rey, you were  _ gone _ .” His voice trembles as he says it, and he can feel a lump form in his throat as she steps closer to him, and one of her hands winds its way into his hair. “You weren’t breathing, you had no pulse, you were  _ gone.  _ I… I wasn’t. You had no life inside of you. You just got it back.” A choked sob escapes him, and he can’t help wrapping his other arm around her waist, holding her close because he needs to feel her heart beating beneath the palm he spreads out over her upper back. He needs to know she’s alive and okay. “Don’t give it away just yet. I’ll be okay.” 

She looks at him hesitantly. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Let’s get out of here,” he tells her, then she nods, and moves to walk away. But then he stops her, tightens the grip he has on her body and pulls her back close to him so that they’re chest to chest. His broken bones protest, but holding her feels so good and right that he doesn’t care. 

She starts to say his name, but she doesn’t get the word out before his lips find hers, and  _ he  _ initiates their second kiss. The first had been started by her, and he’d melted into it, he’d fallen into it completely and surrendered himself into the feeling of experiencing a kiss for the first time. It was long, beautiful, and deep, much like this second one is currently turning out to be, but this time, they move more. 

Rey’s fingers are stroking his hair as her mouth moves perfectly against his, and he can feel her smiling as she returns his kiss, letting him take the lead this time as her arms wrap around his neck. She then rises onto the balls of her feet so he doesn’t have to bend down to kiss her, making him fall for her a little bit more in the process. 

_ Force _ , he loves this woman, he’s known he’s loved her from very early on after they’d met, but now that he knows—now that he can sense in the force, in their  _ bond _ —that she loves him back? It makes his heart burst with joy. He’s smiling, a stupid, big smile, and he feels like the entire galaxy is looking in on what’s happening in this place of darkness watching as they turn on the lights. 

The shadows are scattering to the corners all around them as they kiss, as they cast away the darkness that held them both in its clutches for far too long. He feels like he’s just come home after too long away, comforted with every brush of her lips against his, and he can picture them like this anywhere. 

It’s with an ease that almost frightens him that Ben can imagine a whole future with her, beginning with more kisses just like this one. He can see them kissing seaside, in deserts, jungles, caverns, and more, all in various states of dress and undress, sometimes in a bed, sometimes so tangled in one another he can’t tell where she ends and he begins. He can see a ring on Rey’s finger, a delighted, “yes,” on her lips before she kisses him again, then later she’s a vision in white, telling him, “I do,” as her surname changes to match his, and they’re both crying again but it’s happy this time. They’re happy to be crying. 

The kisses go on and on, and their hair starts turning gray, and he realizes he’s seeing his life with her. It’s an endless barrage of something beautiful and all consuming, a glorious flame he wants to let burn. He wants to bathe in the embers of this fire, to roll around in every piece of ash they make with her, because what he’s seeing has him feeling as if he must be the happiest man alive. 

By the time he pulls away a while later, they’re both thoroughly breathless, and it hurts his chest to breathe as hard as he is, but he knows this wound will heal—he knows his pain will be worth it. Still lost in the daze that is the aftermath of the kiss, he lets his hands fall to the side, hers following suit as their eyes remain locked on one another, then he steps forward, and wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close against him because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to walk very far without support. 

With the connection they have, she understands what he needs instantly, and wraps her arm around his waist, holding him up in a way that assures him she won’t ever let him fall. “Are you ready?” she asks him, then she places a hand over his chest, as if she too needs to feel his heart beating. 

“I’m ready,” he replies, then they begin to move, and though each step is a new agony, he doesn’t mind it. Every step they take is another one closer to happiness and safety, to the life he’s just seen with her, and to never being crushed under the thumb of the voices that once ruled his head again. 

The war for his mind is over, and now his life, the one he’s going to be in charge—in complete control—of is just beginning. 


End file.
